Pictures?

Abby

This week was a not so good running week. Things were just off. I felt tired and burned out and as the last entry testified, I just didn't want to run. I never felt injured, but my legs felt like lead, and my runs were sluggish, especially those at the first part of the week. After taking Thursday off, things started to turn around a little.

Thursday was supposed to be a running day, but I had reading to finish for my 1:00 Milton class and after teaching Kaplan, I did not have the energy to run. It was truly a shame, because Thursday was a fabulously gorgeous day. It was mid to upper seventies and sunny and I found myself slipping outside just to sit for a few more minutes before class started and enjoy the weather. Figures that the one great weather day last week was one of the few days that I did not run.

However, maybe taking Thursday off helped me recover a bit. My Friday run, I was feeling strong at the end of the two mile portion so I picked up the speed a bit. One strategy for building speed overall is to do just that. Speeding up the last third of your training runs helps your body learn to move quickly when it is already tired and is a much more effective place to run quickly than earlier in a race. Anyway, that extra push at the end of that run was a blast. I charged up the hill by the church and then carried that speed down the hill into my complex, feeling great.

Saturday at our Group Training Session, I ended up going at a good clip again. Four of us had decided to do five miles instead of four (well five of us if you count Su... I'll explain in a moment). Anyway, somehow I ended up running with this guy (I can't remember his name for the life of me) who had decided not to bring a map, and who was much faster than I was. Anyway this guy, lets call him Mark, set a fast pace, but not so fast that I couldn't handle it. I firmly believe that I could have stayed with him for the whole run, but I would have been very tired at the end and he would not have been. Anyway Mark and I caught up to a group of three San Diego runners who were going slower and we settled in with them for awhile because they knew the route. But when we got to the second water stop, three of us decided to go ahead. So now it was Mark, Kreuger and I. Now Krueger is forty-three and in spectacular shape. That man could have put both Mark and I to shame. He can run 10 miles at an 8 minute mile pace, so our "fast" pace was not taxing him at all.

Anyway, the three of us were all doing well when we saw Su, all alone, tooling down the other side of the road. I shouted over at her to find out what she was doing and discovered that she had decided at the last minute to do five but was accidentally running the loop backwards. I talked her into joining us and we all ran together for another half mile or so and then the boys started to pull in front. Su looked really tired and I didn't know whether to try and stay with the boys or stay with Su. I decided that since we weren't really supposed to go all out on these runs slowing down would be the best option. But I think that bothered Su more than if I'd just kept going. At this point we were back on the course that all the runners had been on, so the solution came about half mile later when we caught up to some other runners and Su ran with them, while I tried to catch the guys.

Needless to say, I failed. But I came close. They were never out of sight, and I think if we had gone another half mile or so I could have caught them. Regardless, again it felt good to go a little faster. Although I don't think we actually went five miles. I tried to clock the distance using g-maps pedometer this time, and if I got it right the run was almost exactly four miles and I think that TNT's blatant exaggeration is flat out mean. I would have run five miles, but they thwarted me. Evil TNT.

I didn't want to run today but I was being such a grumpy pain in the ass that I made myself go. Despite my speedy Friday and Saturday runs, my run today felt great. I timed it and pushed the end again. This one was 3.4 miles at a sub nine pace. Which isn't crazy fast, but definitely respectable. So the second half of the week fared much better than the first.

This week's clinic's focus was fundraising, which was fitting as I now have my letters 98% ready to go (there are a few problems with some of the labels). Most of the presentation was pretty repetitive (there is a huge fundraising section in my binder) but at the end things got a little more interesting. There was a guy who set up a not-for-profit company with the purpose of supporting team in training fundraising and cancer research because his seven year old son is currently in remission. He makes camouflage t-shirts that are customizable. Apparently the morning after his son was declared officially in remission he came downstairs wearing camouflage. When they asked him why, he said it was because he was fighting a war and he didn't want the enemy to find him. I can't find the guy's website (I grabbed a flyer, but am not sure where I put it, but his story was very moving).

I also found out there are little purple bracelets like the Lance Armstrong bracelet to show your support for the cause. I bought some to sell or give in return for a donation, mainly because it feels like a less awkward way to ask relative strangers for money. I don't really have a strategy yet, but Kristen is going to sell some to her friends. Yay Kristen.

Anyway, I was searching the internet for different bracelet options (there is a 'cancer sucks' bracelet and a red leukemia bracelet as well) when I came across a really moving website about a little girl named Abby. Abby is a four year old who is now in remission after a two year bout with Leukemia. Her parents set up the site to keep friends and family informed while she was sick. One of the things that they did is create a slideshow illustrating a year in the life of their little girl. It is heartwrenching. Having never had to watch someone I love go through chemotherapy it was an important thing for me to see. It helped me understand better what team I am on and what I am fighting for. As Su said it reminds you that "people are so fragile, yet so resilient." I am so glad that Abby has won her fight against cancer.

Next time I have bad day, or week, or run, hopefully I'll remember Abby and her family and get some much needed perspective and inspiration.

This week in summary:

Monday: rest
Tuesday: 3 miles
Wednesday: 5 miles
Thursday: rest
Friday: 3 miles
Saturday: 4-5 miles (I think it was 4)
Sunday: 3 miles
Total: 18-19

I Just Don't Want To

Basically I'm writing this post as a way of talking myself into getting out the door this morning (or afternoon) and actually going for my three mile run. For all the times I've run when I'm hurt, or want to run when I'm not supposed to, there are an equal number of times when nothing is really wrong but I just don't want to run. Today's excuses: I didn't sleep well last night, I'm waking up slowly, and my stomach feels just a little bit off. Those aren't the worst excuses in the world, but they certainly aren't the best.

Part of it is just that I'm in a bad mood this morning. Part of it is that I totally wiped out when I ran on Wednesday. Here is what happened: I was about two miles into a five mile run and I was moving from the street up onto the grass and felt a little bit dizzy and then couldn't quite find my sense of balance and bham i was flat on the ground. I scraped up my leg and had a grass stain on my shoulder. But mainly I was just a little shocked. I lay on the ground for a few minutes watching the cars go by and wondering if I should just hike home. I also wondered what in the world the people driving past me had thought. I mean: Runner, runner running, runner vertical, runner horizontal, wait, what? Obviously nobody was too concerned because nobody stopped to see if I needed help (that would have been slightly mortifying). Anyway, after a few seconds I managed to stand up, and figured since I was almost half way done I would keep going. But after I finished I felt sick for the next couple hours: nauseous and tired and just not well. It wasn't exactly an inspiring experience.

With a little bit of hindsight I think the whole falling thing was a little bit of karma catching up with me for all the times I've wished in the last week for some olympic athlete to take a spectacular fall. Why is falling entertaining? If I had been driving past me when I fell, I probably would have laughed. Bad Lynn, bad, bad Lynn.

In other running related news. Su and I managed to stuff all my envelopes. I just need to go print out return address labels and stick them on all the letters (almost 100!) . Oh and my hip is feeling a lot better (though not completely healed)

But back to today. I could put on my running clothes and hope that pushes me out the door. I could wait until after I tutor Jason, which would mean trying to fit in a run between 5 and 7:30, but maybe I would actually want to run by then. Sigh. Just writing those sentences is enough for me to realize that if this is going to happen today it has to happen soon. So I guess I should stop procrastinating and go.

Random Musings

I have always loved the Olympics. When we all lived at home my little sisters would groan whenever the Olympics rolled around because I would never let them change the channel. I can get excited about almost any sport in the Olympics (okay, I can get excited about just about any sport), I love the displays of pure heart, I love the underdogs, I love the dazzling athleticism of it all. Needless to say, I have been having trouble turning off the television these past two days. But the reason that I'm beginning this whole entry with talk of Olympics, is because growing up, winning an Olympic medal (heck lets be honest, participating in the Olympics) seemed to be the ultimate in achievements. Unrealistic, yes, but still watching the games in Torino some of the old hunger comes back (I once spent an entire winter ice skating for six hours a day on the pond in our backyard in Michigan because my mom told me that Olympic figure skaters trained for 4-6 hours a day.) Anyway, watching the Olympics this year, I am glad that I have an athletic goal to work towards (and a more realistic one at that). It makes me feel some level of kinship with the people hurtling down the mountains in Italy, thank God I'm not that crazy.

So this week we had our GTS (Group Training Session) in Brookhaven. It was basically the same route that I ran when I ran with the running club a few weeks ago, except a little longer. I had people over for dinner on Friday night, so waking up at 6:45 in the morning after several glasses of wine was difficult to do. Around 5 I woke up just enough to hear rain bombarding my roof. When I pried myself out of bed at 6:45 it was cold and still raining and I had nothing to eat for breakfast. I forced some really awful oatmeal down (it was regular flavored instant oatmeal and I had nothing good to add to it and I overcooked it so it tasted like glue). Then I went and picked up Su and headed up to the running store where we were meeting for our shoe clinic. I didn't need new shoes, but if you run, please, please, please go to an actual running store and have them evaluate your pronation tendencies and pick shoes that will be appropriate for you, otherwise you will get hurt. You will get shin splints. You will get tendonitis. You will suffer. So, even though I didn't need the shoe clinic I wanted to make sure that Su went, so she could get the spiel from someone other than me. Anyway, by 9:00 we were finally ready to run and God was it more painful than last weekend. Never mind the rain, the hills were deadly. The course was up and down and up and down, and just when it is almost over, there is one last hill, higher and steeper than all the rest. Since I'd run a shorter version of the same route at least I knew it was the last hill, and I happily shared that knowledge, not quite expecting Tedd to decide to go faster. He charged the hill. I don't charge hills. Maybe on race day, but I did not know where this whole charging the hill business was coming from, after all, last week he was upset we were running four miles and not three and this week he wanted to charge the freaking hill! I told him I didn't think I wanted to take it quite that fast and dropped back a few steps as he mumbled that he just wanted the pain to end more quickly. As soon as I dropped back, I realized I couldn't quite take being left behind, so I caught back up with him and pushed up the hill as well. We pushed all the way to the end and caught up with the front group (who were stuck at a traffic light).

So about that front group... Last week everyone kind of ran together, but this time not so much. Maybe it was because of the hills but people got pretty spread out. And there were four - six people who pulled ahead right after the first water stop and then just stayed up there. The funny thing was, they didn't ever really increase the distance between them and the rest of us. I mean, if it had been a race (and they hadn't been stopped by that traffic light) they might have won by 45 seconds to a minute tops. It just didn't seem necessary to me to forego that group dynamic for such a slightly faster pace. Especially since one of the runners responsible for the whole pulling ahead business was my mentor, who supposedly is supposed to be trying to create a good group dynamic. The whole mentoring business mystifies me. Su's mentor seems to think her job is to be Su's best friend and run at her pace and orient her whole running life around supporting Su. Mine has spoken less than five seconds to me. But I think I like mine better than Su's, just because I would feel smothered. I'm just not that big of a joiner and the idea of a personal cheerleader is almost appalling.

After the run Su and I tried to clock the distance. It felt so much longer than four miles. I definitely got lost trying to re-create the route, but I think I finally got it right the last time through. Unfortunately, according to my odometer, we ran almost exactly four miles (which means those were four slow and painful miles). At one point as we were driving I asked Su, "hey, did we run past this, I don't remember it." I was referring to the giant country club on the right side of the road, 100 meters later on seeing a porta-potty in the front yard of a house I exclaimed "yes, we definitely ran this way, people stopped here to pee." Sad that a porta-potty is more memorable than a country club. Weird that people freely used every porta-potty in sight. Can you imagine living in that house? Of course the porta-potties were there because construction was going on, so maybe the houses were uninhabited (we passed about four porta johns in our four mile trek), but still...

Today Su and I went running around Lullwater which was a nice change of pace. It was fun to get off of the roads and on to some trails. We even explored some really rough trails which reminded me of running in Charlottesville. Christina and I used to run in some pretty wild places. Ah C-ville, how I miss you.

So, my plan is to write my fundraising letter by Tuesday and have an anti-valentine's day envelope stuffing party with Su while watching the Olympics and Gilmore Girls. You are all forewarned, if I have your address I will send you mail. If I don't have your address, fork it over...

This week in summary:

Monday - off
Tuesday - 3 miles
Wednesday - 4 miles
Thursday - off
Friday - 3 miles
Saturday - 4 miles
Sunday - 3 miles

Total: 17 miles

The Threat of Injury

I awoke dreaming pain, remembering the dream of pain, not sure of the distance between reality and dream. I dreamt the pulsing, pounding, excruciating pain behind my eye, the tormented compulsion to toss, to turn, to move, to pace. I dreamt a headache, a migraine, my own private impenetrable torture. And I awoke, wondering if the dream was real, had I simply failed to wake from the pain? or is my mind capable of recreating the experience that vividly in sleep? I do not know the truth. I'm not sure that the truth matters.

This of course has nothing to do with running. Except that pain, the dream of pain, the spectre of pain, and the fear of pain belong both to sleep and to life, and have everything to do with running. Most of us see the act of running as being to some degree traumatic or massochistic. A runner pushes the limits of their body. Learning to judge pain and interpret its meanings makes you a better runner, a healthier runner. Nevertheless, as a runner you stand forever on the threshold between pleasure and agony. Push too far, and your body will punish you for punishing it. Even the best of runs is traumatizing in that it destabilizes the prior equilibrium of life and body. The best run leaves you sweaty, thirsty, tired, and simultaneously happier and refreshed. And then there is the always mentioned runner's high. Running produces addictive endorphins, leaving you euphoric and eager for more.

But what happens when that euphoria is accompanied by pain? by injury? Is it wrong to love the aches, the limps, the injuries that mark your tortured body, because in them is the memory of pleasure? Is it wrong to push through that pain, knowing that such a disavowal of your body's wants, needs and desires will only lead to more pain? Did I dream pain because I love pain?

This is a very long way of saying that my hip is bothering me and that I am trying to let it heal and not run. This is also a way of saying that I enjoy way my stomach feels as though somebody has been digging at it with a grapefruit spoon from the ab exercises I did yesterday. At the same time, the spasms of pain that shoot down my hip if I step slightly awry and the pulsating pain of my dream-ache, scare me. I am frightened that my body won't allow me to train for this marathon. I am frightened of the pain that will amass over twenty-six miles. I am frightened by the fact that I knew when I signed up for this marathon that I was signing up for pain and yet I did it anyway. I am frightened that I awoke dreaming pain.

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Anyway, I promised a summary of last week's running efforts, and so far I have not delivered. So in short, I managed 14 miles, running all my scheduled runs except for Sunday's, which I chose not to do because my hip needed to recover. I'm adding pilates to my regime in the hopes of making injury less likely and to help rehabilitate my hip (which is most likely hurting because of tightness in my lower back due to weakness in my abs... or so says runnersworld.com when I looked up hip pain and running). My goal for this week is to let my hip heal so that this does not become an ongoing saga. If I have to take the entire week off of running, I will do so. But I will try to substitute in some biking or swimming (whatever feels more comfortable).

Monday - rest
Tuesday - 4 miles
Wednesday - rest
Thursday - 4 miles
Friday - rest
Saturday - 6 miles
Sunday - rest/pilates

Total: 14 miles

'till next time :-)

Welcome to the Monkey House

I'm not sure I have ever been as simultaneously scared and intrigued by a church as I was this morning, wending my way through the gigantic Peachtree Presbytarian church looking for the meeting room for the "Coach's Workshop" to start my training experience. This church scared me because it was so massive, and seemed to have so many types of things (gyms, cafeterias, fellowship rooms, classrooms, etc.) that I was half afraid I would be swallowed by the building. I swear you could live in this place, which is not what I want of a church. At the same time, it was so all-encompassing that I have to admit I'm now quite curious. What would it be like to go to a church like that? Presbytarianism is so main-stream, but... all I could think was CULT! it felt insidious... but maybe I just have a problem with all organized religion these days.

Anyway, today was my first team in training group training session. For about an hour and a half we had a "Coach's Workshop" where they talked to us about equipment, nutrition, hydration, running stride, etc. Since I've run before, it was kind of boring, and I found myself daydreaming about my bed and getting anxious about the run itself. Then we all went outside to warm-up and run with our teams. The Alaska team is smaller than the San Diego team so I'm not sure I made the right call, but I'm sure once I get to know my team I'll be happier with it.

Yesterday was beautiful, but today not so much. It was actually warmer when I woke up at 7 than it was when we started our run at 9:30. It wasn't really raining, but it was cold damp and windy. Our team went for four miles. We went out slow and stuck together more or less... which was kind of nice. I dropped my map very early and decided to go back for it, at which point I gave up on running with Su and her mentor (I felt like the third wheel there) and started running with this boy named Tedd. Tedd just moved here in November and has run a marathon before but he claims he is not a runner. I'm not really sure how that is possible, but he also claims that his marathon time was so bad that he was getting passed by walkers and he refused to tell me what his time was. Tedd had been hoping that we would run 3 miles, and I had been hoping we would run 5, so I decided to be his cheerleader of sorts. I ran with him the whole run and tried to be encouraging and distracting, and I think it worked for both of us. I stopped worrying about how much faster and longer I wanted to run and he was surprised at how easy the run felt. Though I did wonder if it was slightly emasculating for him...

So... as we were finishing our run, Tedd was running out of steam, and I decided at the last minute that I really wanted to extend my run. So, I headed back out and added on 2 - 2.5 miles on my run. During the Coach's session he said that we shouldn't run with a watch and that the course isn't exactly measured. He told us to leave our type-A personalities on the shelf, not to overdue it, and then claimed that men have more of a problem with that than women. I think I'm an exception to that rule (though I must admit that I'm offended by that concept in general. I challenge you to produce a guy that is more competitive than I am, and has more of a problem not competing than I do (Isn't it great that I perform my complexes as I talk about them)). Phew, okay, enough of the double parentheses stuff. Pretty much, with the exception of not running too fast (I was definitely running slower than usual) I broke every one of his rules. I ran with my watch, I drove my car around our route after the fact to find out just exactly how much we had ran, and I added mileage on to the run after it was finished. It really isn't my fault though that they tried to pass a 3.5 mile run off as a 4 mile run, or that the training schedule had said there would be an advanced group running 5 miles today, but the Alaska group only offered the option of 2 or 4. I swear I could have left my type A personality on the shelf if I wanted to. Of course, it wouldn't have stayed on the shelf for very long, I would have just run further tomorrow... :-)

On my "extra" run, I kept seeing people who were heading back in from their various training routes. I felt a little guilty every time I did so. Especially when I saw the head coach (whose advice I had ignored). They have "sweepers" who sweep the course looking for stragglers, they try to keep track of every one, you have to fight to escape the herd and then feel guilty about it afterwards. Hmmm... sounds a bit like... church? a cult? I mean, I've heard people say that running is their religion, but today cast a whole new light on that concept.

Anyway, since I'm not yet at the end of my week, I think I'll go ahead and post this and save the rest for tomorrow. Stay tuned...